


if I had breathed you

by epicfrenchfry



Series: sick of living in the eye of the storm [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, Child Neglect, Coma, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Guilt, POV Catelyn Stark, my poor boy, poor Jon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 22:36:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17886428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epicfrenchfry/pseuds/epicfrenchfry
Summary: Catelyn tried to love him, she really did... What she hated him for wasn't his fault, she knew, but she just couldn't bring herself to stop.Or, how Jon got into the coma mentioned in ch.11 of IWFUYAMT, and how he gained and lost the mother he never had.





	if I had breathed you

Catelyn was still fuming. Of course Ned was too busy. Of course there was nobody else around to pick him up. Of course she was the one stuck going to pick up her husband's bastard from his soccer practice. Little Bran, who had begged so sweetly to come along, sat in his booster seat, quietly driving his toy cars up the seat belt and along the edge of the car window. She calmed at the sight of him, smiling into the rearview mirror despite the fact that he wasn't looking. She pulled the car up to the curb, lining up behind the other mothers and their equally utilitarian family vans. The only difference was, they wanted the children they were picking up.

The gymnasium doors opened and a herd of preteen boys spilled out onto the sidewalk, breaking off and running to their awaiting rides. Catelyn eyed Jon as he approached, much slower than any of the other kids, and though he instinctively reached for the passenger side door, he retreated after meeting her gaze and moved instead to the backseat. He didn't say a word to her as he climbed in, though he looked as though he wanted to, and she wondered just how warm and welcoming Ned was to the boy.

Neither one of them spoke a word to each other for the duration of the drive. She turned off the school road and onto the main road, picking up to 45mph. She glanced into the mirror again to check on them. Jon had occupied himself by playing with Bran, letting the boy drive a plastic truck up his arm and over his face, tiny plastic tires digging into the bridge of his nose. Bran laughed, and such a sweet sound it was, light with all the carefree innocence her baby exuded. His little legs kicked joyously.

Her gaze trailed to Jon, and she couldn't look away. He was laughing, so happy to be entertaining her boy, and the dimples in his cheeks were foreign to her, but his eyes crinkled up in the corners just like Ned's did. She hated him for it, hated this boy who hadn't done a thing to deserve it, but oh how she loathed him. 

Bran laughed again, her sweet boy, and he kicked his legs up again. Then her world lit with a blinding brightness, there was a crunching scream of metal that had all three of them shouting, and the wheel spun uselessly in her hands as the car twisted around her.

She didn't know who it was that was crying; it might even have been her. She struggled from the wreckage of the car, thoughts dragging a mile behind, and turned slowly to face it, to face the boys in the backseat. The backseat, that was now collapsed in on itself, emitting thick plumes of the blackest smoke. Fire, she thought minutely. That looked like fire smoke, coming from what remained of the backseat. The backseat, where the boys were. 

The boys!

Her thoughts finally having caught up with her, she lurched forward and seized the door handle, wrenching it as far open as she could.

"Bran!" she gasped. "Bran, baby, talk to me! Where does it hurt?" she asked, for her baby was the one who was crying, crying in loud gutwrenching sobs, crumpled in his car seat with the seat belt twisted around him. She grabbed the belt and yanked desperately at it, tears burning in her eyes as the smoke grew thicker. 

"Just breathe, sweetie, I've got you," she said, much more confidently than she felt. "Hold still, okay? I'm going to untangle you." 

Bran whimpered, breathless with his own streaming tears. Catelyn worked at the belt with shaking hands, working the twisted metal free of the clasp. Bran wrapped his arms around her and sobbed into the breast of her sweater, and only when she lifted him from the seat did she see what had become of his legs. 

Choking back her own tears, Catelyn peered back in. There he was, the bastard she so hated, lying prone in the backseat with one of Bran's trucks still in his hand. There was blood all down his face, so much of it that she couldn't locate the source, and the bulk of the car was crumpled over his skinny form, effectively trapping him. She inhaled sharply. He- he looked... 

Without a doubt, there was no way she'd be able to free him. She dragged her gaze away from him and carried Bran several paces to safety. The truck that had hit them had blazed off into the distance, with nary a flash of its brake lights. Her phone, she thought suddenly.

She looked back at the car, back into the backseat, back at Jon. He... She could.... but she couldn't. She couldn't leave him like that. She had to... had to call for help. She couldn't let him die like that.  Guilt was festering in her gut as she looked upon that innocent boy, who had as a baby smiled so sweetly at her, had called her mama, had wanted nothing but the adoration she showered upon her baby Robb. There had been nothing left in her heart to give him, no love to spare, until little Sansa came along, then Arya, then Bran and baby Rickon. He had watched child after child join the Stark household, had watched her love each and every one of them so deeply, so intensely, as his love was worn down and eventually broken. There was nothing in her heart for her husband's bastard, nothing but loathing, but now she stood gazing upon him with that strange sensation writhing like serpents in her belly, leaving her sick and confused. 

She seized her phone off the seat and dialed an ambulance, trying to get her thoughts in order. When was it that the boy had stopped trying to call her mama? When was it that he began calling her Mrs. Stark? When was it that he stopped looking at her with hope in those big doe eyes, wondering when she would love him back? When was it that she had foregone her duties as a mother in exchange for jealousy and hatred towards a guileless child?

Sitting in the grass with Bran, holding her baby as he cried himself to sleep, Catelyn found herself rethinking. Sirens blared, the flashing lights dancing up and down through the trees as they raced down the road towards her. She looked on as the emergency crew sawed through the metal wreckage to free Jon, as they lifted the boy with utmost care he had never known from her, and loaded him into the ambulance. One man approached her, hand outstretched. 

"His legs— ma'am, he needs to come too. You both need to come with us." 

So she found herself in an ambulance with Jon and little Bran, whose legs had been bound into splints, whose tears had finally dried under the influence of morphine. Jon had still not moved. She didn't know then that it would be days until he did. She didn't know then that she would go home that night and spend hours making a dreamcatcher, the most beautiful and elaborate piece she had ever created, as she cried and tried to staunch her own guilt in the task. That dreamcatcher would be brought to hang over Jon's bed at the hospital, woven with a vow to treat him better, treat him like the son he ought to have been, and to love him. The dreamcatcher, years from now, would continue to hang over Jon's bed at home, but useless now, because her promise had been broken. She could never bring herself to love him.


End file.
